CHRIST’S LONELINESS AND OURS.

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A SermonPUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 8TH, 1907,
DELIVERED BY C.H.SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
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“Jesus
answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now
come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave
Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.” -
John
xvi. 31, 32.

“Do ye now believe?” Then it seems that faith
held them fast to Christ; but, as soon as fear prevailed, they were
scattered, and left their Master alone. Faith has an attracting and
upholding power. It is the root of constancy, and the source of
perseverance, under the power of God’s Spirit. “While we believe, we
remain faithful to our Lord; when we are unbelieving, we are scattered,
“every man to his own.” While we trust, we follow closely; when we give
way to fear, we ungratefully forsake our Lord. May the Holy Spirit
maintain our faith in full vigour, that it may nourish all our other
graces! Faith being strong, no faculty of the inner man will languish;
but if faith declines, the energy of our spiritual nature speedily
decays. If ye believe not, ye shall not be established; but “the just
shall live by faith,” to the fullest force of life. This being noted, our meditation shall
now be fixed alone upon the Saviour’s loneliness, and the measure in
which the believer is brought into the same condition.

I. THE LONELINESS OF THE SAVIOUR.Note
the fact of it. He was left
alone, - alone just when most, as man, He needed human sympathy.
Solitude to Him, during His earthly life, was often the cause of
strength; He was strong in public ministry because of the hours spent in
secret wrestling with God on the lone mountain side; but when He came to
the hour of His agony, His perfect humanity pined after human sympathy,
yet it was denied Him. He was alone in the garden of Gethsemane; though
He took the eleven with Him, yet must He leave eight of them outside at
the garden gate; and the three, the choice, the
élite of them all, though they were brought somewhat nearer to the
scene of His passion, yet even they must remain at a stone’s cast
distance. None could enter into the inner circle of His sufferings,
where the furnace was heated seven times hotter than it was wont to be
heated. In the bloody sweat and the agony of Gethsemane, the Saviour
trod the winepress alone. His specially-favoured disciples might have
watched with Him, wept with Him, and prayed for Him; but they did not.
They left His lone prayer to ascend to heaven unattended by sympathetic
cries. He was alone, too, when put upon His
trial. False witnesses were found to bear lying testimony against Him,
but no man stood forward to attest the honesty, quietness, and goodness
of His life. Surely one of the many who had been healed by Him, or of
the crowds that had been fed by His bountiful hand, or likelier still,
some of those who had received the pardon of their sins and
enlightenment of their minds by His teaching might have come forward to
defend Him. But no, His coward followers are silent when their Lord is
slandered. “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,” but no pitying
voice entreats that He may be delivered. True, His judge’s wife tries to
persuade her husband to have nothing to do with Him, and her vacillating
husband offers to liberate Him if the mob will have it so; but none will
raise the shout of “loose Him, and let Him go.” He was not literally
alone upon the cross, yet He was really so, in a deep spiritual sense.
Though a few loving ones gathered at the cross’ foot, yet these could
offer Him no assistance, and probably dared not utter more than a
tearful protest. Perhaps the boldest there was that dying thief who
called Him “Lord,” and expostulated with his brother-malefactor, saying,
“This man hath done nothing amiss.” Few indeed were the voices that were
lifted up on behalf of the Man of sorrows. From the time when He bowed
in agony amid the deep shades of the Mount of Olives, till the moment
when He entered the thicker darkness of the valley of death-shade, He
was left to suffer alone. Here was the fact, what was
the reason for it? We conclude
that fear overcame the hearts of his disciples. It is natural that men
should care for their lives; but these men pushed this instinct of
self-preservation beyond its legitimate sphere; and when they found that
the Master was taken, and that probably the disciples might share His
fate, they each one, in the panic of the moment, fled in haste. They
were not all traitors, but they were all cowards for the time. They
meant not to desert their Lord, they even scorned the thought when it
was put to them in calmer moments; but they were taken by surprise, and
like a flock of sheep they fled from the wolf. They rallied after a
little, and mustered courage enough to follow Him afar off; they did not
quite forget Him; they watched Him to His latter end, they kept together
after He was dead; they united to bury Him, and they came together
instinctively on the first day of the week. They had not altogether cast
off their loyalty to their Lord and Master, for He was still keeping
those whom the Father had given Him thatnone of them might be lost; yet fear
had, for a while, defeated their faith, and they had left Him alone.
There was a deeper reason, however,
for the Saviour’s loneliness; it was a condition of His sufferings that
He should be forsaken; desertion was a necessary ingredient in that cup
of vicarious suffering which He had covenanted to drink for us. We
deserved to be forsaken, and therefore He must be. Since our sins
against man, as well as our sins against God, deserved that we should be
forsaken of men, He, bearing our sins against God and man, is forsaken.
It cannot be that a sinner should enjoy true friendship. Sin is a
separating thing; and so, when Christ is made the Sin-bearer, His
friends must leave Him. Besides, this was one jewel in the crown of His
glory. It was said, in triumph, by the great hero of old, who typified
our Lord, “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there
was none with Me.” To make that true in the severest sense, it was
needful that the Captain of our salvation. should, by His single arm,
defeat the whole of hell’s battalions. His are the sole laurels of the
war; for “His right hand, and His holy arm, hath gotten Him the
victory.” Can you, for a moment, enter into
the sorrow of that loneliness?
There are men to whom it is a small matter to be friendless; their
coarse minds scorn the gentle joys of fellowship. Sterner virtues may
tread beneath their iron heel the sweet flowers of friendship; and men
may be so defiantly self-reliant that, like lions, they are most at home
amid congenial solitudes. Sympathy they scorn as womanish, and
fellowship as a superfluity. But our Saviour was not like them; He was
too perfect a man to become isolated and misanthropical. His grand
gentle nature was full of sympathy towards others, and therefore sought
it in return. You hear the voice of grief at the loss of brotherly
sympathy in the mournful accents of that gentle rebuke, “What, could ye
not watch with Me one hour? “How could they sleep whilst He must sweat;
how could they repose while His soul was “exceeding sorrowful, even unto
death”? He showed the greatness of His soul, even in its depression,
when He lovingly excused them by saying, “The spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak.” How sad to Him it was that they should
desert Him! The brave Peter and all the rest of them, all taking to
their heels! Worse still was it to receive the traitor’s kiss with the
word, “Hail, Master,” as the son of perdition betrayed his Friend to win
the blood-money! David lamented the villainy of Ahithophel, but the
Saviour, inasmuch as He was of a more tender spirit than the son of
Jesse, even more keenly felt the treachery of Judas. For Peter to say
that he knew Him not, and with cursing and swearing to deny Him three
times in succession, was terribly cruel; there was such an element of
deliberation about that denial, that it must have cut the Saviour to the
very quick. But where was John, - John who leaned on His bosom, - “that
disciple whom Jesus loved,” - where was John? Did not he say a word, nor
even interject a single syllable for his dear Friend? Has Jonathan
forgotten his David? The Master might have said to John, “Thy love to me
was wonderful, passing the love of women;” but, alas! John is gone with
the rest; he has nought to say for his Master! Though he remains at the
cross’ foot to the last, yet even he cannot defend Him. Jesus is all
alone, - all alone; and the sorrow of His lonely heart none of us can
fully fathom. This is a painful meditation, and
therefore let us notice the result of our Saviour’s loneliness? Did it destroy Him? Did it
overwhelm Him? It pained Him, but it did not dismay Him. “Ye shall leave
me alone: and yet I am not alone,” saith He, “because the Father is with
me” The effect of that solace in His soul was wonderful. Our Saviour did
not turn aside from the purpose of redeeming His people, though they
proved so unworthy of being redeemed. Might He not well have said, “You
have forsaken Me, so I will forsake you”? It would have seemed but
natural for Him to have exclaimed, “You are types of all My people, you
care little enough for Me: I have come into this world to save you, but
you do not try to rescue Me, you have deserted Me, so I leave you to
your fate.” But no, “having loved His own which were in the world, He
loved them unto the end,” and although they forsook Him, yet He
fulfilled to each one of them his ancient promise, “I will never leave
thee, nor forsake thee.” The baptism wherewith He was to be baptized He
would still accomplish, and be immersed in the floods of death for their
sake. Nor did He merely exhibit constancy to
His purpose; He displayed great courageousness of spirit. He was all
alone, but yet how peaceful He was! The calmness of the Saviour is
wonderful. When He was brought before Herod, He would not utter one
hasty or complaining word. His perfect silence was the fittest
eloquence, and therefore He was majestically mute. Before Pilate, until
it was needful for Him to speak, not a syllable could be extorted from
Him. All along, in patience He possessed His soul. In the garden, and
afterwards, He was quiet as a lamb, surrendering Himself to the
sacrifice without a struggle. His solemn, deliberate self-surrender, in
His loneliness, has an awfulness of love in it, fitter for thought than
words. His brave spirit was not to be cowed, though it stood at bay
alone, and all the dogs of hell raged around Him. Mark, too, not only the constancy and
the courageousness of our Saviour, but His matchless unselfishness; for,
while His disciples forsook Him, and fled, He forgave them in His inmost
heart, and cherished no resentment against them. When He rose again, His
conduct to these runaways was that of a loving shepherd or a tender
friend, - He fully forgave them all. If He did mention it, it was only
in that gentle way in which He enquired of Peter, “Simon, son of Jonas,
lovest thou Me?” - reminding him of his failure, for his lasting
improvement and benefit, and giving him an honourable commission as the
token that it was all condoned. Enquire awhile
the reason for this result.
Why was it that our Saviour, in His loneliness, thus stood so constant,
and courageous, and forgiving? Was it not because He fell back into the
arms of His Father when He was forsaken by His friends? It was even so:
“The Father is with Me.” Look carefully at that word. As the Saviour
uttered it, it was true that the Father’s presence was with Him, but I
beg you to remember that it was not true, in every sense, all the way
through His passion. The Father was not with Him on the cross in the
sense of manifested personal favour. His cry, “My God, My God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me?” shows that our Saviour did not, at that time, derive
comfort from any present revelation of the love of God to Him as man.
The conscious presence and display of love were taken away. There is, therefore, another meaning
in these words, “Because the Father is with Me;” and, surely, it is
this, the Father was always with
Him in His design. The enterprise He had undertaken was the
salvation of His people, and the Father was wholly and ever with Him in
that respect. In that sense, He was with Him even when He deserted Him;
it was but a form of the Father’s being with Christ that He should be
forsaken of God. I am not quite stating a paradox; and if it should
sound like one to any here, let me expound it. It was in pursuance of
their united great design that the Father forsook the Son. Both were
resolved upon the same gracious purpose, and therefore the Father must
forsake the Son, that the Son’s purpose and the Father’s purpose in our
redemption might be achieved. He was with Him when He forsook Him; with
Him in design when He was not with Him in the smiles of His face. Furthermore,
the Father was always with our
Lord in His co-working. When Jesus was in Gethsemane, and the staves
and lanterns were being prepared, the God of providence was permitting
or arranging all. When Jesus was taken before Caiaphas, and Herod, and
Pilate, and Annas, God was allowing all things to be done; the Father
was with Christ fulfilling the prophesies, answering the types, and
accomplishing their covenant engagements. Through the whole sad chapter
it might be said, “My Father worketh hitherto.” Even amid the thick
darkness and the dire suffering of Christ, the Father was with Christ,
working those very sufferings in Him, for “it pleased the Lord to bruise
Him; He hath put Him to grief.” Into this fact Christ sinks as into a
sea of comfort: “The Father is with Me” “It is enough,” saith He; “My
own chosen friends forsake Me, and My dearest earthly friends leave Me,
those whom I have purchased with My blood deny Me, but My Father is with
Me.” By a matchless exercise of faith, our Redeemer realized this, and
was sustained even in that dread hour.

II. We shall make practical use of our
subject by considering THE CHRISTIAN IN HIS LONELINESS. No believer traverses all the road to
heaven in company; lonely spots there must be here and there, though the
greater part of our heavenward pilgrimage is made cheerful by the
society of fellow-travellers. “They go from company to company; every
one of them in Zion appeareth before God.” Christ’s sheep love to go in
flocks. “They that feared the Lord spake often one to another.” We take
sweet counsel together, and walk to the house of God in company; yet,
somewhere or other on the road, every man will find narrow defiles, and
close places where pilgrims must march in single file. Sometimes, the child of God endures
loneliness arising from the absence of godly society. It may be that, in his early days as a
Christian, he mixed much with gracious persons, was able to attend many
of their meetings, and to converse in private with the excellent of the
earth; but now his lot is cast where he is as a sparrow alone on the
housetop. No others in the family think as he does, he enjoys no
familiar converse concerning his Lord, and has no one to counsel or
console him. He often wishes he could find friends to whom he could open
his mind. He would rejoice to see a Christian minister, or an advanced
believer; but, like Joseph in Egypt, he is a stranger in a strange land.
This is a very great trial to the Christian, an ordeal of the most
severe character; even the strong may dread it, and the weak are sorely
shaken by it. To such lonely ones, our Lord’s words, now before us, are
commended, with the prayer that they may make them their own: “I am
alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.” When
Jacob was alone, at Bethel, he laid him down to sleep, and soon was in a
region peopled by spirits innumerable, above whom was God Himself. That
vision made the night at Bethel the least lonely season that Jacob ever
spent. Your meditations, O solitary ones, as you read the Bible in
secret, and your prayers, as you draw near to God in your lonely room,
and your Saviour Himself in His blessed Person, will be to you what the
ladder was to Jacob. The words of God’s Book, made living to you, shall
be to your mind the angels, and God Himself shall have fellowship with
you. If you lament your loneliness, cure it by seeking heavenly company.
If you have no companions below who are holy, seek all the more to
commune with those who are in heaven, where Christ sitteth at the right
hand of God. God’s people are frequently made
lonely through obedience to honest
convictions. It may happen that you live in the midst of professing
Christians, but you have received light upon a part of God’s Word which
you had formerly neglected, either a doctrine merely, or an ordinance,
or some other matter, and having received that light, if you are as you
should be, you are at once obedient to it. It will frequently result,
from this action on your part, that you will greatly vex many good
people whom you love and respect, but to whose wishes you cannot yield.
Your Master’s will once known, father or mother may not stand in your
way; you do not wish. to be singular, or obstinate, or offensive, but
you must do the Lord’s will even if it should sever every fond
connection. Perhaps, for a time, prejudiced persons may almost deny you
Christian fellowship; many a baptized believer has been made to know
what it means to be almost tabooed and shut out because he cannot see as
others see, but is resolved to follow his conscience at all hazards.
Under such circumstances, even in a godly household, a Christian who
fully carries out his convictions may find himself treading a separated
path. Be bold, my dear brethren, and do not flinch.
Your Saviour walked alone, and you must do so too. Perhaps this lone obedience is to be a
test of your faith. Persevere; yield not a particle of truth. These very
friends, who now turn their backs on you, if they are good for anything,
will respect you all the more for having the courage to be honest, and
perhaps the day will come when, through your example, they will be led
in the same obedient way. At any rate, do not mar your testimony by
hesitancy or wavering, but “follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth” Fall
back upon this truth: you may displease and alienate friends, and be
charged with bigotry, self-will, and obstinacy, but you are not alone
when you follow the path of obedience, for the Father is with you. If
what you hold is God’s truth, God is with you in maintaining it. If the
ordinance to which you submit was ordained by Christ, Jesus is with you
in it. Care not how either the church or the world reviles you; serve
you your Master, and He will not desert you. With all due deference to
others, pay yet greater deference to the Lord who bought you with His
blood; and where He leads, follow without delay; the Father will be with
you in so doing.The solitary way is appointed to
believers who rise to eminence of
faith. In these days, the common run of Christians have but
struggling faith. Should you sift the great mountain of visible
Christianity very carefully, will you find so much as ten grains of
faith in the whole? When the Son of man comes, keen as His eyes are to
discover faith, shall He find it on the earth? Here and there, we meet a
man to whom it is given to believe in God with mighty faith. As soon as
such a man strikes out a project, and sets about a work which none but
men of his mould would venture upon, straightway there arises a clamour,
“The man is over zealous,” or he will be charged with an innovating
spirit, rashness, fanaticism., or absurdity. Should the work go on, the
opposers whisper together, “Wait a little while, and you’ll see the end
of all this wildfire.” Have we not heard them criticize an earnest
evangelist by saying, “His preaching is mere excitement, the result of
it is spasmodic;” at another time, “The enterprise which he carries out
is Quixotic; his designs are Utopian”? What said the sober semi-faith of
men to Luther? Luther had read this passage, “By the deeds of the law
there shall no flesh be justified in His sight.” He went to a venerable
divine about it, and complained of the enormities of Rome. What was the
good but weak brother’s reply? “Go thou to thy cell, and pray and study
for thyself, and leave these weighty matters alone.” Here it would have
ended had the brave Reformer continued to consult with flesh and blood,
but his faith enabled him to go alone, if none would accompany him. He
nailed up his theses on the church door, and showed that one man at
least had faith in the gospel and in its God. Then trouble came, but
Luther minded it not because the Father was with him. We also must be
prepared, if God gives us strong faith, to ride far ahead like spiritual
Uhlans, who bravely pioneer the way for the rank and file of the army.
It were well if the Church of God had more sons swifter than eagles, and
bolder than lions, in God’s service; men who can do and dare alone, till
laggards gain courage from them, and follow in their track. These
Valiant-for-truths full often pursue a solitary path, but let them
console themselves with this word of the solitary Saviour, “Yet I am not
alone, because the Father is with Me.” If we can but believe in God, He
will never be behindhand with us; if we can dare, God will do; if we can
trust, God will never suffer us to be confounded, world without end. It
is sweet beyond expression to climb where only God can lead, and plant
the standard on the highest towers of the foe. Another form of loneliness is the
portion of Christians when they
come into deep soul-conflict. My brethren, some of you understand
what I mean by that. Our faith, at times, has to fight for very
existence. The old Adam within us rages mightily, and the new spirit
within us, like a young lion, disdains to be vanquished, and so these
two mighty ones contend till our spirit is full of agony. Some of us
know what it is to be tempted with blasphemies we should not dare to
repeat, to be vexed with horrid temptations which we have grappled with
and overcome, but which have almost cost us resistance unto blood. In
such inward conflicts, saints must be alone. They cannot tell their
feelings to others, they would not dare to do so; and if they did, their
own brethren would despise or upbraid them, for the most of professors
would not even know what they meant, and even those who have trodden
other fiery ways would not be able to sympathize in all, but would
answer them thus, “Those are points in which I cannot go with you.”
Christ alone was tempted in all points like as we are, though without
sin. No one man is tempted in all points exactly like another man, and
each man has certain trials in which he must stand alone amid the rage
of war, with not even a book to help him, or a biography to assist him,
no man ever having gone that way before except that one Man whose trail
reveals His nail-pierced feet. He alone knows all the devious paths of
sorrow. Yet, even in such by-ways, the Father is with us, helping,
sustaining, and giving us grace to conquer at the close. We will not, however, dwell on this
aspect of solitary walking, for we have three others to mention. Many
dear brethren have to endure the solitude of unnoticed labour. They are serving God in a way
which is exceedingly useful, but not at all noticeable. How very sweet
to many workers are those little corners of the newspapers and magazines
which describe their labours and successes; yet some, who are doing what
God will think a great deal more of at the last, never saw their names
in print. Yonder beloved brother is plodding away in a little country
village; nobody knows anything about him, but he is bringing souls to
God. Unknown to fame, the angels are acquainted with him, and a few
precious ones whom he has led to Jesus know him well. Perhaps yonder
sister has a little class in the Sunday-school; there is nothing
striking in her or in her class; now and then, a little child ascends to
heaven to report her success, and occasionally another comes into the
church; but nobody thinks of her as a very remarkable worker; she is a
flower that blooms almost unseen, but she is nonetheless fragrant. Or
shall we think of the humble City Missionary? The Superintendent of the
District knows that he goes his regular rounds, but he has no idea of
the earnest prayers and deep devotedness of that obscure lover of Jesus.
The City Mission Magazine puts him down as trying to do his duty, but
nobody knows what it costs him to cry and sigh over souls. There is a
Bible-woman; she is mentioned in the Report as making so many visits a
week, but nobody discovers all that she is doing for the poor and needy,
and how many are saved in the Lord through her instrumentality. Hundreds
of God’s dear servants are serving Him without the encouragement of
man’s approving eye; yet God is with them. Never mind where you work; care more
about how you work! Never mind who sees or does not see you, so long as
God approves your efforts. If He smiles, be content. We cannot be always
sure when we are most useful. A certain minister with very great
difficulty reached a place where he had promised to preach. There was
deep snow upon the ground, therefore only one hearer came. However, he
preached as zealously as if there had been a thousand. Years after, when
he was travelling in that same part of the country, he met a man who had
been the founder of a church in the village, and from it scores of
others had been established. The man came to see him, and said, “I have
good reason to remember you, sir, for I was once your only hearer; and
what has been done here has been brought about instrumentally through my
conversion under that sermon.” We cannot estimate our success. One child
in the Sabbath-school, converted, may turn out to be worth five hundred
others, because he may be the means of bringing ten thousand to Christ.
It is not the acreage you sow, it is the multiplication which God gives
to the seed, which will make up the harvest. You have less to do with
being successful than with being faithful. Your main comfort is that, in
your labour, you are not alone, for God, the eternal One, who guides the
marches of the stars, is with you. There is such a thing - I would that
we might reach it,- as the solitude of elevated piety. In the plain, everything is in
company; but, the higher you ascend, the more lonely is the mountain
path. At this moment, there must be an awful solitude on the top of Mont
Blanc. Where the stars look silently on the monarch of mountains, how
deep the silence above the untrodden snows! How lonely is the summit of
the Matterhorn, or the peak of Monte Rosa! When a man grows in grace, he
rises out of the fellowship of the many, and draws nearer to God. Unless
placed in very happy circumstances, he will find very few who understand
the higher life, and can thoroughly commune with him. But then the man
will be as humble as he is high, and he will fall back, necessarily, and
naturally, upon the eternal fellowship of God. As the mountain pierces
the skies, and offers its massive peak to be the footstool of the throne
of God, so the good man passes within the veil, unseen by mortal eyes,
into the secret place of the tabernacle of the Most High, where he
abides under the shadow of the Almighty.The last solitude will come to us all
in the hour of death. Down to
the river’s brink they may go with us, a weeping company, -- wife, and
children, and friends. Their kind looks will mean the help they cannot
give; to that river’s brink they may go in fond companionship, but then,
as with our Lord the cloud received Him out of His disciples’ sight, so
must we be received out of sight of our beloved ones. The chariot of
fire must take Elijah away from Elisha. We must ascend alone. Bunyan may
picture Christian and Hopeful together in the stream, but it is not so;
they pass each one alone through the river. Yet we shall not be alone,
my brethren; we correct our speech; the Father will be with us; Jesus
will be with us; the eternal Comforter will be with us; the everlasting
Godhead in the Trinity of persons shall be with us, and the angels of
God shall be our convoy. Let us go our way, rejoicing that, when we
shall be alone, we shall not be alone, because the Father will be with
us, as He is with us even now.